Bleeding Through the Edges of the World
by rodevo
Summary: UPDATED. New description. Sammy can't find Dean. Dean doesn't even know he's a hunter any more. He's living someone else's life. Or, at least, not his own life. Sam doesn't know it yet, but he needs to figure things out in a hurry.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary**: Sammy can't find Dean. And Dean--oh my--Dean seems to be living a two-cars-in-the-suburbs-with-the-wife life. Polo shirts and golf, dude. But it's not all fun and games (and golf). Sam doesn't know it, but he'd better hurry up and find his brother.

**Bleeding Through the Edges of the World**

_"Sammy!"_

_"I know!"_

_"Shoot it!"_

_"I know!"_

_"Now!"_

_"Dean, just--"_

_"Oh hell! So damn slow, Sammy. Are you sure you're my brother?"_

* * *

Dean wakes with a start, with an unfamiliar name on his lips or maybe a name he only knows asleep, but not awake, not in the real world. 

Sammy.

"Feel better?"

He wipes his hand across his face and looks across the car seat at his wife. That sounds odd--his wife--though they've been married...damn, next Tuesday is their anniversary, better not forget that. He drags memories from his sleep-filmed mind--married two years out of college, bought their first house last year. Dean and Hope. And life is perfect. More perfect than it ever is in dreams.

"Dean?" Hope lays a hand on his knee.

"Yeah, yeah," he says, sitting up and rubbing his right eye. He looks out the window. "Where are we?"

"Almost home," she says, turning right onto their street. She puts her hand against his cheek and he reaches up and grabs her fingers affectionately. "How's the headache?" she asks.

"I think it's gone," he says. They spent the afternoon at the annual picnic for the company where he's worked the last six years. He likes his job all right--a bunch of engineers in gray cubicles building earth movers and bulldozers--but he doesn't like his boss much and he hates the company picnic. Last year he and Hope made a pact, that she would feign a headache a half hour after they got there. Something happened, though he can't remember exactly what, and she forgot--he'd made eyes at her across the table, cocked his head toward the parking lot, but she'd just frowned at him as if he'd gone slightly insane and then laughed about it later after he'd been suckered into playing softball with five-year-olds.

This year he'd been trying to come up with an excuse, anything, so they could leave and go do something fun together--a jazz concert in the park or that new museum opening or just hang out together like he remembers they used to, like they don't anymore. But they'd been there maybe half an hour, he'd been talking to his boss's wife about something he can't even remember now and the headache had hit him like a son of a bitch, like a ton of bricks dropped straight out of the sky. He'd covered pretty well, he thought, but Hope had seen it, had realized right off that he wasn't actually even faking and made their excuses. He looks over at her as she turns into the driveway. He's a lucky man to have her, to have this house, his job, the SUV, everything. So lucky.

Hope's life is a dream and she knows it. Or, she would know it if she ever had time to think about it. She and Dean are busy all the time. She has yoga on Mondays and Thursdays, they go together to the gym on Wednesdays after dinner. Friday nights it's out with friends and Saturdays they work around the house, go out to dinner sometimes, maybe a movie. She volunteers at the hospice, works a pretty good development job at the local university. They have a great new house--it's their dream house--everything they've ever wanted.

And she gets to be married to Dean. She met him...well, she doesn't remember exactly where they met, but she remembers their first date, as clear as if it was yesterday. How it had been winter, both of them in school and busy doing...things, not much money, average college students. He'd told her to dress warm and actually sent her back for another pair of gloves and a wool hat. He'd managed somehow to get access to the roof of the graduate library, the tallest building on campus and he took her up there--a perfect cold clear night and they'd sat back to back and looked at the sky as he pointed out the constellations. But when she'd asked him one too many questions he couldn't answer, he'd laughed and admitted he didn't know much of anything at all about astronomy, just thought it would impress her and he showed her this book he'd borrowed from the library. The whole thing had been a little bit corny and, you know, cold but he'd grinned at her with teeth so white they seemed to glow in the crisp darkness and he'd rubbed her hands together to warm them and kissed her in a sweet slow way that she still to this day remembers.

Dean and Hope, like destiny, like...

"Has this always been here?"

"The front porch?"

He grins at her and she knows that he would call her a dork if they were five. That would be okay though, she's been called a dork before, though she can't--

Her head jerks sharply and her hand goes to her cheekbone, a flash of pain like a red-hot stabbing needle, but so quick she's not sure after if she even really felt it.

"Hope?" Dean bends his head to look at her.

"Yes," she says moving her hand away. "It's fine."

Dean takes a couple of aspirin, but the headache's really gone. He goes outside and works on the lawn for an hour or so, mows and edges and sweeps grass from the walk. The day is just sinking into dusk when he puts the lawnmower in the shed and comes up on the deck where Hope has set out chips and salsa and ice-cold long necks. They sit for a moment in silence.

"Did you see that little boy with the Frankenstein mask at the picnic today?" Hope asks. "So cute. I mean it's May, Halloween isn't for what...six months, but he had to have it his mother said. Wears it everywhere."

"Frankenstein mask?" Dean frowns at her.

"Didn't you see it? He had his glasses on over the mask. He looked like a real little monster boy."

Dean thinks he would have noticed a little monster boy. He thinks...something flashes right behind his eyes, quick and bright and almost like pain but too quick for him to actually read it that way. Or at least that's what he tells himself--it's not pain. But it makes him twitch and he shifts upright in his chair.

Hope looks at him across the table and even in the fading light he can see one eyebrow arching up.

"You want to order in?" he asks. Order in, get a good night's sleep, no more headaches, or flashes of not-pain, or things he doesn't want to think about.

"Sure." Hope says. "Are you going out with Mark and Jeff tomorrow?"

Dean rolls his eyes. Jesus. Golf. He almost forgot.

"You don't hate it." Hope laughs and throws a chip at him. "You're good at it."

Dean quirks his lip and takes a long draw from his beer. He is good at it. Usually takes a few bucks from Mark and Jeff whenever they play. It's...and he can't think of one reason he hates it. It's outside in good weather with friends and a few beers--good clean fun and Dean's all for that. But it's...golf. He knows there's something wrong with it.

The light fades. Their yard is almost a half acre and they keep it as neat as anyone else in their neighborhood. Hope wants a fence--good fences make good neighbors--she says. Dean has no idea what that means, can't see any reason to have a fence when there's nothing to keep in or out. But he'll build her a fence if she wants one, rope Mark and Jeff and anyone else he can find into helping him any and all weekends until it's done. He'll do anything if it makes Hope happy. Because he's not sure Hope is happy here. He sees her looking out the window as if there's something just out of reach that she wants so bad she can taste it, wants in ways she doesn't understand herself, wants above anything he can ever give her. He never suspects that sometimes she thinks the same of him.

* * *

_"G, come on. How could it kill you to go camping with me?"_

_"It's camping. Do you never watch horror movies? Werewolves and zombies and howler monkeys--"_

_"Howler monkeys?"_

_"Well, bad stuff. There's bad stuff out there."_

_"There's bad stuff everywhere."_

_"That's what I'm saying."_

_"It'll be fun. We can watch the sunrise, collect rocks--"_

_"You are so not my sister."_

* * *

Sam wakes with a great inrush of breath as if waking and coming back to life are the same thing. Urgency gnaws at his bones and he sits up quick though has no idea where he is or what's going on. He hasn't even opened his eyes yet.

"Whoa there, junior, take it easy." A hand laid on his chest, a voice he doesn't recognize. He opens his eyes and regrets it for a second as the world spins and settles and he realizes that he's in a hospital room all soft green walls and shaded light.

"What?" His voice is raspy and uncertain.

"Relax." The blob in front of him slowly resolves into a gray-haired nurse in green scrubs. Her faded blue eyes look at him kindly as if she's seen his type before and knows everything that's coming next. "You're in the emergency room. It's not serious. You just need-- I'll get the doctor," she says and leaves. In the hallway there's a loud crash as she exits, several raised voices and a woman's scream, choked off into a breathy hack.

"Uh...wait," Sam says but she's already gone. He swings his feet over the edge of the bed. Already the spinning has slowed enough so he's pretty sure if he can just find his clothes he can get out of here. He wonders why--

Dean.

Crap.

Why haven't they said anything about Dean?

He stands too quick and has to grab the instrument tray, almost upsets it and sits quick back down on the bed again, holding his head with his right hand. Shit. Where is Dean?

He sits still for a minute, then stands up again, slower this time, one hand still on the bed and just stands there, breathing. The nurse didn't say anything about Dean, didn't look at him in the way they did when things were really bad. So he thinks--hopes--that Dean's stuck pacing in the waiting room or scamming up some credit cards or something, something that explains why he isn't here and isn't hurt.

He finds that if he moves slow enough things don't spin and after a brief search, he finds his clothes in a bag by the door. He can't feel anything--no contusions, no stitches so he figures he doesn't have a concussion. He isn't quite clear on what did happen though and that bothers him a lot. He's pulling on his jeans one slow leg at a time when the doctor walks into the room--at least he figures she's a doctor even though she's dressed in green scrubs just like the nurse. "What do you think you're doing?" she says.

Sam can't play games at the moment so he says the only thing in his head, "Getting dressed."

The doctor sighs heavily. "Yeah," she says, "I can see that. You need to rest." She glares at him until he finishes pulling his pants up, zips them, buttons the top button, and sits back down on the bed. "What happened?" she asks.

And Sam frowns at her for a minute because--isn't she supposed to be the doctor? "Uhm..."

"They found you in the woods, five miles up one of the hiking trails," she says with a sigh. "You were dehydrated and unconscious. You have no visible injuries. There were four other people in your general vicinity in a similar condition. There were packs and water nearby. We'd like to know what happened."

What happened? Sam doesn't remember hiking. He doesn't even remember the last thing he remembers. He hopes that things will get clearer when his head doesn't feel so much like it's stuffed full of fresh-picked cotton.

"What about my brother," he asks. "Is he okay?"

She crosses her arms over her chest and taps one sneakered foot, glancing quick back into the hallway as if he's the least important thing on her list right now, which he probably is. "Look, there was a family of three, a young woman, and you. I don't know where your brother is, but they didn't bring him in here with you.

* * *

_Thunk. Thunk. Thunk._

_"You're going to have to pay for that, Dean."_

_Thunk._

_"I am so far beyond bored, Sam. So far."_

_"What do you want from me? There's nothing."_

_"There can't be nothing, Sammy. Come on!"_

_"Look you want to look?"_

_Thunk._

_"Stop that, Dean. Go for a walk or something."_

_"A walk. A walk has to go somewhere, Sammy. There's no where to go. It's a dry town."_

_"There's a fish fry at the church tonight."_

_Thunk._

_"Hey! Watch it!"_

_"So bored, Sam."_


	2. Chapter 2

**Bleeding Through the Edges of the World--Chapter 2  
**

Author's Note: Sorry it's taken me so long to update. I think I finally have the flow of this story figured out (I know what the story is and where it's going, but some of the middle bits have been a bit obscure). If you're reading, I'd love to hear from you--good, bad, or indifferent. Thanks for giving it a look. Please review if you've a mind to.

* * *

_"What are you wearing, Hope?"_

_"Clothes."_

_"I know they're clothes. But, Jesus, we're going clubbing, not to Farmer Bob's Country Hoedown. You make me go camping with you, you come clubbing with me first. That's the deal."_

_"But look, this top. It has sparkly bits."_

_"That's because you stole it from me."_

_"And your point is...?"_

_"Those jeans..."_

_"What's wrong with them? People wear jeans all the time."_

_"Do they show off your ass? No. Are they designer jeans? Boys would wear those jeans."_

_"They're comfortable."_

_"You are so hopeless."_

_"Look at you. You're wearing combat boots."_

_"Fashionable combat boots."_

_"Right."_

* * *

Hope gets up at five o'clock every weekday morning and runs three miles before Dean ever even moves. He stays up sometimes until one or two in the morning prowling the house like a caged lion, watching old football games on cable, staring at the tool bench in the basement wondering what the hell it's there for. Neither one of them knows, wouldn't have the words to explain it if they tried--Hope is afraid of waking up and Dean is afraid of sleeping. 

It's in the moment between waking and sleeping that Hope feels most loosely connected to the world, as if the life she's built is less substantial than her dreams. And she can't even remember her dreams, every time she wakes she knows she dreamed something, thinks it might have been important. But it's gone, like the aftermath of rain and she can never figure out just what it was and why she cares.

She puts coffee on and leaves a steaming mug on the nightstand for Dean while she showers and dresses. Hope wears narrow skirts that skim her knees, silk tops in pastel colors with a single strand of pearls and tiny mother-of-pearl earrings. She owns one pair of jeans, which she rarely wears--she's all shorts and khakis and denim skirts on weekends. Hope is cool and tailored, never casual or sloppy.

Dean comes out of the bathroom as she's slipping on her shoes--low-heeled pumps that match her outfit. He tastes like strong coffee when he kisses her and that more than anything--more than waking or running or getting dressed for work snaps her back into the world--solid, cool, and clean.

"Busy day?" she asks him as he dresses in freshly-pressed khakis and a dark green polo shirt.

Before Dean can reply the phone rings. He picks it up and has a one-sided conversation, his replies clipped off and sharp, "Yes?" "OK." "I can be there in twenty minutes."

When he hangs up there is a darkness in his eyes that startles Hope. She almost reaches out to him, then hesitates; she can't, for a moment, remember whether that is something she normally does or not. Then, he is touching her shoulder, turning with her to the door, walking downstairs, saying, "That was Mark. His wife--Jen--Jen didn't come home last night. He's called the police, but..."

"What can you do?" Hope asks.

The muscles underneath Dean's right cheekbone twitch, like a flinch, and Hope doesn't think he's even aware that it's happened. "I--" he begins to say.

And there it is again, only this time Hope thinks she can see the pain flash through him, like it's a physical thing, a long thin spear right down through his cheekbone, through his jaw. Flash, stab, out, gone--quick like distant lightning. It hurts her more to see/not-see it than it does for it to stab through him--at least that's how it seems to her.

"Dean--" she puts her hand out.

"I can be there," Dean says. A simple answer but the way he says it like it's dragged out of him, like it's not the thing he wants to say at all. He stands there for a moment, his mouth half-open as if there's more to say but he can't quite remember what.

Hope holds her breath and has no idea why. There's a shadow across his face even though he's standing in a pool of sunlight from the wide front windows. The sky outside is clear.

"I have to go," Dean finally says.

He leans over and kisses her, then leaves. For a startling moment, Hope can see two doors, one leading into darkness and one to light, the dark one painful to look at, frightening. She blinks. The world slides back into place. There's just one door, just one Dean walking through it into sunshine. Just another day.

_Shit_.

Hope doesn't say it out loud. She can't remember the last time she swore.

She sits down on the couch. On the coffee table is a small collection of rocks, a collection Hope has had since childhood--'Hope's childhood,' in fact, is what she and Dean call it, as if the rocks contain it all, every event and every memory; 'Dean's childhood' is two RC cars and a plastic gun sitting on the mantel in the family room.

Hope picks up a river rock she plucked from a creek in Alabama a long summer vacation ago. She closes her eyes and runs her thumb along the edge. This rock is real, she thinks. She can feel the rock in her hand, her hand resting on her thigh, the back of her thigh against the microsuede upholstery on the couch.

She is real. She is here.

She...it is so tiring...she is so tired...and she thinks that can't be right, she can't be tired. Because what does she do all day except sit and stare at computer screens and type empty words that... Her eye twitches, like a bright electric shock. She opens her eyes and for a fraction of a second she can see that door again, the black dark hole of a door, the door that leads to hell. She blinks again, it's gone. She stares at sunshine and brand new Berber carpet and the gleaming glass top of the coffee table.

_Shit_.

Her head hurts like a thousand electric needles and her nose is bleeding.

* * *

_"Where have you been, Dean? And why do you smell like--what do you smell like?"_

_"There was a fire."_

_"So?"_

_"I thought it might be a supernatural fire."_

_"Was it?"_

_"Well, no...it was actually a pig barn."_

_"That would explain the smell."_

_"I saved those pigs' lives, Sammy."_

_"Maybe someday they'll repay you."_

_"Yeah, well. I think I'll take a shower."_

_"And maybe burn those clothes."_

_"Okay, Sammy. I get it."_

_"Oh, and Dean? When you get out of the shower--"_

_"Yeah?"_

_"I think I found something."_

_"Yeah!"_

* * *

Sam checks himself out of the hospital in spite of the doctor's disapproval. She looks at him with one eyebrow raised. She probably means to tell him to keep his fluids up, to get some rest, but there's a sudden flurry of activity--a bad car/motorcycle accident up on the freeway and she flings the papers at him and leaves him alone to make his slow way to the desk and finish signing himself out. 

He checks for Dean in the waiting room, but doesn't expect to find him there. There's a slow anxious burning feeling growing in his gut--something is really wrong. The world looks just the same, same people, same weather, same everything--except it's wrong, he knows it's wrong. And it isn't Psychic Boy kicking in. It's something bad and twisted and marked by the continuing absence of Dean who ought to be here.

Except he isn't.

The world is no longer spinning and his head has settled down to a dull throbbing. At the front desk when he left, they gave him the card of an Officer Clemens and said that he needed to call and go down to the station and make a report. He stands on the sidewalk out in front of the hospital and thinks about what to do next. It's a sign of how bad he's still feeling that he has to think about this.

_Find Dean._

That's the priority, but first he has to remember where they were staying and why they were here.

"Need a ride?"

Sam looks over and sees a black and white police car, a uniformed officer behind the wheel. Officer Clemens, he assumes.

"No," he says, "You know, I think I'll walk. Clear my head."

Officer Clemens frowns but he can't make Sam get in the car. At least, Sam doesn't think he can.

"You staying at the Montrose?" he asks.

Okay, Sam thinks. Maybe. Out loud, he says, "Yeah." Half a question, but saying the word actually triggers his brain. "Yes," he says, "I'm staying at the Montrose." He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out an old-fashioned key. "The Montrose," he says. As if repeating it enough times will unlock the rest of his brain.

Officer Clemens' frown deepens. "Come down to the station in the morning," he finally says. "I need a statement." He doesn't wait for Sam to answer, just puts the car in gear and pulls away.

"Okay," Sam says to the back of the police car. "Sure."

The hospital is on the edge of town so he starts walking in the only direction that makes sense. As he walks his head starts to clear and he remembers the Montrose Motor Inn. He remembers how to get there. He remembers where he is and what he and Dean were doing here.

_Shit_.

* * *

_"Okay, run this by me one more time, Sammy."_

_"There've been three reports in the last fifteen years of people disappearing in the Green Mountain National Forest."_

_"People who don't exist."_

_"Well, right. I mean, someone reports them missing, obviously."_

_"Huh. Obviously."_

_"But the police can't find any trace of them--no birth records, no bank accounts, nothing. Except the people who were with them when they disappeared insist that they were real."_

_"What happened to those people?"_

_"The people who were with them? Most of them are dead."_

_"Shit."_


End file.
